Dialog International

The Ten Greatest German Novels

Next week the 2012 German Book Prize will be bestowed on the best German novel of the year, so it is a good time to put together a list of ten the greatest German novels.  Or, more accurately, the ten greatest German-language novels, since three of the novels are by Austrian novelists (for Kafka, "Austrian" in a geopolitical sense). 

This list is based entirely on personal preference, rather than consensus by literary critics.  Don't agree with my choices?  Have at it in the comments, and please add your alternative titles. 

I excluded (reluctantly) the novellas from this list, a literary genre where German writers have surpassed their French, American, Russian and English counterparts in producing masterpieces.  But the titles chosen here belong in the canon of great world literature and should be read by all. 

So here's the list, in chronological order by date of publication (with apologies to Robert Musil, Hermann Hesse, Max Frisch, and Heinrich Böll):

1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774)
2. Theodor Fontane, Frau Jenny Treibel (1892)
3. Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie (1901)
4. Franz Kafka, Der Prozess (1925) 
5. Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) 
6. Joseph Roth, Radetzkymarsch (1932) 
7. Hermann Broch, Die SchlafwandlerTrilogie (1932) 
8. Anna Seghers, Transit (1944) 
9. Wolfgang Koeppen, Tauben im Grass (1951)
10. Günter Grass, Die Blechtrommel (1959)  

Anyone interested in lists might enjoy my Top Ten German Poets , 50 Near-Perfect Books of German Poetry, and FIve of the Most Precocious German Authors. 

German Left Stands With Syrian Dictator Assad

Anti-Americanism is a chronic disease of the German left.  If the United States backs an opposition group anywhere in the world, then it must be a CIA plot - or better, a CIA-Israeli plot. America and Israel are the twin bogeymen for the left; their influence is always evil. 

And so it is with Syria.  The United States, along with the EU, Canada, Japan - and, yes, Israel - have called for the Syrian dictator Bahar al-Assad to step down and to stop the massacre of his own citizens.  In the logic of the German left this makes Assad a hero of the the forces of liberation.  The fact that Assad enjoys the full support of an autocrat like Vladimir Putin makes support for the repressive regime in Damascus all the more compelling (see my post The Putinization of the German Left).The left-wing blog NachDenkSeiten published a translation of an interview with MIddle East expert Günter Meyer, who blames the internal strife and violence in Syria on meddling by the United States and Israel. The US support for the Free Syrian Army has nothing to do with supporting democratic forces or humanitarian intervention but rather is a calculated strategy to realize geopolitical objectives in the region (original interview in English here):  

GM: There are numerous statements from the US government which stress the geostrategic importance of the ousting of the Syrian regime so that both Iran and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon will loose their most important ally. The Iranian and Syrian supply of military equipment to Hezbollah will no longer be possible. The weakening of the military force of this Shiite organization means that its impact on the power structure of Lebanon and especially its ability to attack Israel will dramatically decline. [8] The fall of Bashar Al-Assad will also weaken the influence of Russia and China in the Middle East and strengthen the role of the US and Saudi Arabia in this region.

As to the question Cui bono? - who stands to gain from the bloodshed in Syria, Meyer has a clear answer: the United States and Israel.

GM: So far, Israel and the US have been the main winners. The government in Jerusalem has been able to rally significant support for its fight against Iran from Washington and the European capitals. This does not apply to the military intervention demanded by Netanyahu and Barak, but in respect to a significant increase in sanctions against Teheran which cause more and more serious problems for the economic development of Iran.

The US is profiting from the growing dependency of the GCC countries on military protection by US troops combined with record sales of weapons by arms manufacturers in the United States, where tens of thousands of new jobs are created and hundred thousands of old jobs are secured.

The journalist Karin Leukefeld reports for the left-wing newspapers Neues Deutschland and Junge Welt from inside Syria, and her "reporting" could be described as pure propaganda for the Assad regime.  In fact her journalistic "work" is routinely cited by the official SyriaNews agency.  In Leukefeld's view, the US wants control of Syria's gas reserves and the opposition forces are nothing more than mercenary "death squads" financed by the CIA.  All of the atrocities reported in the Western press are, in fact, committed by these CIA-funded para-military groups:

Es geht darum, eine Destabilisierungspolitik zu betreiben… Wo man nicht die eigenen Truppen hinschicken will. Weil diese Art der Intervention auch keine politische Legitimität hat. Ich denke, das ist ein „Undercover-War“, also ein Krieg, der illegal geführt wird. Man spricht auch von einem „schmutzigen Krieg“, weil er sich auch jenseits von völkerrechtlichen Vereinbarungen abspielt. Die USA haben immer zu solchen Gruppierungen gegriffen, wenn es um ihre strategischen, politischen Interessen in bestimmten Regionen gegangen ist. Um sie durchzusetzen bzw. durchzudrücken…

(The goal is to destabilize the region. When you don't want to send your own troops. Because an intervention like this has no political legitimacy. I call this an "undercover war" - a war that is being conducted illegally.  You can also call it a "dirty war", because it violates all human rights treaties. The US has always relied on groups like this to protect its strategic geopolitical interests in certain regions. In order to achieve - or force - them.)

It is grotesque to see the German left align itself with the reactionary theocracy in Tehran - because it represents a threat to Israeli- American interests in the region.  One left-wing publication calls for solidarity with the "Axis of Resistance" (die Achse des Widerstands) consisting of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.  

In light of the German left's support forthe bloody dictatorship in Damascus - as well as the corrupt, authoritarian rule in Moscow -its embrace of 9/11 "Trutherism" seems almost benign by comparison.

Heimat Trilogy Available on Netflix

Netflix doesn't have a great selection of German films, but it now offers the entire Heimat Trilogy - Edgar Reitz's epic saga that covers Germany's tumultuous history from 1918 to 2000.  This is more than 53 hours of film on 20 DVD's (streaming format not available).  And, based on what I've seen, it is a riveting story.  I finished the first Heimat - 15 hours of viewing - and found that I had grown a beard and my lawn was in desperate need of mowing. 

The first Heimat focuses almost exclusively on the Simon family in the tiny rural village of Schabbach in western Germany.  We experience the Weimar inflation, the Nazi era, the war, the American occupation and the Wirtschaftswunder in Schabbach, where change comes very slowly - if at all.  The family (and the village) are held together by the beautiful and long-suffering Maria Simon (wonderfully acted by Marita Breuer). The acting is superb, and the script is excellent - except for the Felliniesque final episode.  I loved the cinematography, but I don't quite get why Edgar Reitz keeps switching from black and white to color. 

Reitz has been criticized for its realtively benign depiction of the Nazi period. But I think it is accurate that the 1930's were perceived by many as a time of relative prosperity (see Götz Aly's 2005 book Hitlers Volkstaat) until the war led tp widespread shortages and misery. And one of the central characters - Wilfried Wiegand - joins the SS and is heard bragging about the Final Solution at a Christmas party. 

Reitz has made some allowances for the American audience.  Each episode begins with a recap of the story in English, narrated by one of the characters in the drama.

I've started Die zweite Heimat - Chronik einer Jugend, which follows Maria's youngest son Hermann as he leaves the provincial Schabbach for the bright lights and Bohemian life in the Schwabing section of Munich. 

 

The Stupidity of Jan Fleischhauer

Every four years Der Spiegel attempts to make sense of the US presidential election for its readers.  In 2008 it was Gabor Steingart who botched the coverage, and assured Germans that Barack Obama had zero chance of winning the presidency.  For the 2012 cycle Jan Fleischhauer, resident conservative intellectual at Der Spiegel, is providing wrong-headed information. 

In his most recent column, Fleischhauer assures readers that the pundits have it wrong and that Mitt Romney will win in November.  Also, there is nothing to worry about, since Romney is not an extremist.  How does Fleischauer know this?  Google.

Wer sich ein wenig im Netz umschaut, wird schnell feststellen, dass Romney in seinem politischen Leben schon so ziemlich jeden Standpunkt vertreten hat, der auch Demokraten am Herzen liegt.

(If you look around the Internet a bit you'll see that in his political career Romney has taken virtually every position that Democrats hold dear.)

Yes, that's precisely the problem.  Romney ran as a progressive moderate to win the state house in Massachusetts - he had to, in order to win in liberal state.  But now he has renounced every position he held ten years ago - from reproductive choice for women to equality for gay couples.  He has embraced the Tea Party and its language of exclusion in order to win over the extreme right wing that control's today's Republican Party.  He has vowed to repeal "Obamacare" his first day in office, depriving ten millions of Americans access to affordable health care.  His recotd shows that he has no core principles,  he is Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften who will say anything, promise anything, to win the White House. 

Fleischhauer attempts to buttress his argument by referring to a Newsweek piecc by Harvard hack Naill Ferguson. Salon Magazine reviewed Ferguson's piece and determined that "his piece is just fundamentally dishonest, top to bottom."

Advice to Jan Fleischauer (and to Der Spiegel): it's better to remain silent on things you know nothing about.

"Catholic" Hate Site Celebrates Killing of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens

This is really sick. The hate site kreuz.net, a forum of the Catholic Holocaust-denying Pius Brothers sect, has published a vile piece alleging that J.Christoper Stevens was killed because he was a "Sodomist", that he suffered from a "gay disorder" (Homo-Störung).

Arabische Medien berichteten, daß Stevens bei dem Angriff auf das US-Konsultat in der libyschen Stadt Benghazi geschlagen, von mehreren Männern vergewaltigt und getötet wurde.

(Arab media have reported that during the attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city Benghazi Stevens was beaten and raped by several men and then killed.)

In fact, an autopsy showed that the ambassador died of smoke inhalation and there was zero evidence that he had been violated.

The anonymous Web site operators furthermoe claim that the assignment of Stevens to Libya was a deliberate "provocation" of the Obama administration, which is seeking to advance a "homosexual agenda."

Frau Clinton ist eine aggressive Unterstützerin von Homo-Aufmärschen außerhalb der USA.
Im letzten Jahr beschloß US-Präsident Barack Obama, weltweit Homo-Gruppierungen zu finanzieren.

(Mrs. Clinton is an agressive supporter of gay demonstrations outside the US. This past year US President Barack Obama decided to finance gay groups globally.)

German authorities (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) have been investigating kreuz.net for violating Germany's incitement laws.  The site is hosted by the San Francisco Web hosting company CloudFlare.

Did Jesus have a wife?

Recently I wrote about German theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann and her breakthrough study on the oppression of women and supression of sexuality in the Roman Catholic Church.  In her book, Ranke-Heinemann documents that the doctrine of priestly celibacy is based on a wilful distortion of the Gospels and what we know of the historical Jesus.  There is absoutely no evidence that Jesus himself was celibate, and Ranke-Heinemann speculates that Jesus may have even had a wife.  Ranke-Heinmeann was hounded out of the Church for her blasphemous views.  Now, based on a newly -discovered papyrus fragment, it appears that Ranke-Heinemann was correct.  Not only is there evidence that Jesus may have married, but he may also have had a female disciple:

The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”

The discovery has implications for the Catholic Church, calling into question not only the insistence on priestly celibacy, but also the prohibition on ordaining women as priests.  Celibacy, in particular, has had devastating consequences for clergy and is at the heart of the child rape scandal that has ravaged the Church for decades. 

Eugen Drewermann, the German theologian and psychologist who was expelled from the priesthood by Josef Ratzinger, has written extensively on the terrible spiritual consequences from the Church's opposition placed between the love of God and love of humans.  He writes in his 1991 book Kleriker - Psychogramm eines Ideals:

"Celibacy as anticipation of death - what kind of life could follow from that! Earthly life is no hurdle to jump on the way to heaven. It is the mirror of eternity into which one has to look as intensely as possible because all we can ever know of God on earth is reflected in it.  Only one who has lived well will die with ease."

Will new insight into the historical Jesus lead to any changes in Church doctrine?  Sadly, no.

German court acquits rapist; 15-year-old victim "did not resist enough"

This story has outraged many in Germany and beyond:

A German teenager who said she was raped by a 31-year-old man was told by the judge she had not defended herself enough for the law to convict him – simply saying no was not enough.

The young girl told her rapist to "stop" assaulting her, but that was not enough for the court to convict him:

The physically strong man and the girl had sex, despite her having told him, “No, I don’t want to,” the court heard.

“This is not enough to meet one of the three conditions laid out in paragraph 117 of the criminal law code,” Wolfgang Schmidt, spokesman for the court and a judge himself, told The Local.

“The door to the flat was unlocked, it was in a building with other flats. She could have left with the other women or called out for help, for example. There was no evidence presented to the court of violence being used, or threatened, and her position could not be described as defenceless.

To which the Mädchenmannschaft blog comments sardonically:

"Man kann schließlich von keinem Mann erwarten, dass er ‚Nein ich will keinen Sex‘ versteht!"

(You can't expect any man to understand it when you say:"No, I don't want to have sex!")

Of course, in the US, even consensual sex with a child under 17 is considered "statutory rape", although I suspect that many American Republicans would agree with the German court that the case here does not meet the standards of "legitimate rape.

Sie wollen Krieg / They want war

 

 

AUF DER MAUER STAND MIT KREIDE:
Sie wollen Krieg.
Der es geschrieben hat
Ist schon gefallen.

Bertolt Brecht

Judith Butler in Frankfurt: Anatomy of a Witch Hunt

The prestigious Theodor W. Adorno Prize is awarded every three years on September 11 by the City of Frankfurt to recognize outstanding achievement in philosophy, theater, music or film.  This year it was awarded to Berkeley professor Judith Butler. The choice ignited a firestorm of controversy - especially among Jewish organizations - because of Professor Buller's vocal opposition to Israel's policies in the occupied territories. 

Judith Butler is a Jewish feminist, but is demonized by the Israel Lobby in the US and Germany as a "Jew Hater" and "anti-Semite".  Recently, she answered these charges in detail in a piece published in Die Zeit. It is worth reading the entire article, but I'll just quote an excerpt here:

Meine Auffassung ist, dass Juden und Palästinenser einen Weg finden müssen, unter gleichen Bedingungen zusammenzuleben. Wie so viele andere sehne auch ich mich nach einem wirklich demokratischen Gemeinwesen in jenem Flecken Erde, und ich befürworte die Grundsätze der Selbstbestimmung und des Zusammenlebens für beide Völker, ja für alle Völker. Und ich wünsche mir, zusammen mit einer wachsenden Zahl von Juden und Nichtjuden, dass die Besetzung ein Ende findet, dass Gewalttätigkeiten jeder Art eingestellt werden und dass die wesentlichen politischen Rechte aller Völker in der Region durch eine neue politische Struktur garantiert werden.

(I firmly believe that Jews and Palestinians must find a way to life together under common conditions. Like many others I long for a truly democratic governance on that patch of earth, and I support the fundamental rights of self-determination and coexistence for both groups- indeed, for all people.  And along with a growing number of Jews and non-Jews I hope for an end to the occupation, and and end to violence of any kind and that the essential political  rights of all peoples in the region are guaranteed by a new political framework.)

This response has hardly satisfied Judith Butler's critics.  In fact, as Haaretz reports, the witch hunt continues: 

This witch hunt originates in a dangerous strand of American Jewry that has been assaulting freedom of expression even in American universities. An article in The Jerusalem Post by one such person opened with the idiotic sentence, "Judith Butler ... came to prominence as an anti-Israel agitator almost a decade ago."

As Haaretz writes, Judith Butler is continuing the tradition of Hannah Arendt, who criticized certain states for suspending the legal status of certain groups of its citizens:

Butler is coming to Frankfurt in Arendt's footsteps. As she wrote in another work, "Hannah Arendt was hardly brandishing weapons when she argued in the late 1940s and early 1950s against Israel as a state based on notions of Jewish sovereignty. She becomes now a resource for post-Zionism ... Arendt was perhaps in the 20th century the most avid secular Jewish critic of Zionism, and she was able to articulate reasons why she found the establishment of the state of Israel to be illegitimate without thereby calling for a war against that polity."

No doubt today Arendt would be demonized by the Israel Lobby as a "jew Hater" and "anti-Semite".

I cannot find the text of Judith Butler's acceptance speech she delivered in Frankfurt.  According to one report on the speech, Butler did not directly address the hateful criticism of her, but rather offered reflection on the famous sentence from Adorno's Minima Moralia :"Wrong life cannot be lived rightly" (Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen). That in itself is a suitable rejoinder to those who distort Judith Butler's writing and promote an unjust system.

Kurt Tucholsky on Mitt Romney

 

Es gibt Leute, die wollen lieber
einen Stehplatz in der ersten Klasse
als einen Sitzplatz in der dritten.
KURT TUCHIOLSKY

 

         (Some people would rather stay standing in First Class,

           than take a seat in Coach)

(HT Rudi Homann)